Neurotic Beauty

Cross-cultural comparisons are
thrilling but perilous. Pronouncing authoritatively about one culture is
difficult enough; running the gauntlet of two communities of academic specialists
is a daunting prospect. Fortunately, Morris Berman is intrepid.

Most historians would be content to
have written one deeply researched and interpretively wide-ranging trilogy on a
large and important subject. Berman has written two: one on alternative forms
of consciousness and spirituality (The
Re-enchantment of the World, Coming to Our Senses, Wandering God) and one
on the decline of American civilization (The
Twilight of American Culture, Dark Ages America, Why America Failed). The
second trilogy, a grimly fascinating inventory of the pathologies of
contemporary America and an unsparing portrait of American history and national
character, is a masterpiece. Unsurprisingly (considering how self-critical and
historically informed most Americans are), it was not well received. At
interludes while writing his grand historical syntheses, Berman has also
produced fiction, poetry, a memoir, and a volume of essays.

He has returned to the grand scale
and the prophetic mode in Neurotic Beauty.
Even the most pessimistic of prophets cannot help looking for hopeful signs.
Berman ended his "American decline" trilogy on a despairing note. Four
centuries of relentless territorial expansion and manic economic growth have
left American resources exhausted and American society in a state of befuddled
anomie. And it seemed as if the rest of the world had been so thoroughly
Americanized that there was little chance of escaping a global collapse and a
subsequent Dark Age, this one probably resembling dystopian science fiction rather
than medieval torpor.

Like many other jaded Westerners,
Berman turned toward the East, searching not so much, however, for interior
solace as for glimpses of a viable human future. Looking beneath Japan's
Westernized surface, he finds a submerged psychic and cultural stratum, which
contains some possible antidotes to the consumerist and individualist fevers
that have driven the US to delirium.

According to Berman, Japanese culture
has two sources, both external. In the 6th century, itinerant Chinese
and Korean monks brought Buddhism to Japan, thereby opening the country to
large-scale importation of Chinese culture. There was little Japanese culture -
in fact, no written language or legal system - before that time, and Japanese literature
and institutions remained imitative of Chinese exemplars for many centuries.

It was a peaceful and prosperous
society, even if isolated. This did not protect it, however, from the second
great event in Japanese history: the arrival of the American fleet under
Admiral Perry in 1853. With supreme arrogance, Perry informed the Japanese that
if they did not open their country to trade with the West, he would bomb their
capital. The Japanese submitted, but so intense was their humiliation that the
country's leaders embarked on a crash course of military and industrial
development, to catch up with the Western imperialists.

The Western imperialists did not, of
course, look kindly on this ambition. The resulting competition for markets and
resources led to war in the Pacific, which ended with an even greater trauma
for Japan. The Japanese reacted, as before, by imitating their conquerors, once
again to the point of outstripping them, at least by some measures.

Today, though, as Berman demonstrated
at great length in his "American decline" trilogy, their conquerors are looking
less and less worth imitating. Japan is still a country of bullet trains and
elegant skyscrapers, as well as the world's largest net creditor, with a higher
average standard of living than the United States. But resistance to Western
modernity is growing. Not only have prominent Japanese literary figures, like the
aristocratic Yukio Mishima and Japan's first Nobel Prize winner, Yasunari
Kawabata, carried their protests over the erosion of the country's cultural
traditions to the point of ritual suicide, but an astonishing number of young
adults - around a million, by some estimates - have in effect seceded from the
society and economy, withdrawing with their books and video games into a
bedroom of their parents' house and not emerging for years at a time. These hikokomori, or "recluses," one
sociologist writes, are an "utterly rational indictment" of Japanese society, which
offers them eighty-hour workweeks at meaningless jobs, usually with long
commutes. The fate of many of those who accept the eighty-hour week is a stern
warning: Japan's suicide rate is twice that of the US.

Another million young adults are
unemployed, not in school, and not looking for work. Another 3-4 million are
working part-time at dead-end jobs and (mostly) living at home. There is also a
disturbing "celibacy syndrome": a third of Japanese youths between 16-24 say
they have no interest in sex; a third of people under 30 have never dated
anyone; and fewer than half of all those from 18-34 are in any kind of romantic
relationship. In quantitative economic terms, at least compared with the US,
Japan is a success. But more and more Japanese feel a deep malaise.

The reason, Berman suggests, is that
unlike Americans, the Japanese know that there is more to life than getting and
spending. "Japan remembers what it is like to be old, to be quiet, to turn
inward," writes a Japanese academic. The long centuries of isolation and
self-sufficiency before the mid-19th-century American irruption are
"in the nation's DNA." Reading that DNA, and patiently explaining to impatient
Americans what it is that the Japanese know, is the aim - and achievement - of Neurotic Beauty.

One thing the Japanese know is
nothing; or better, nothingness. As Berman emphasizes, there are two kinds of
nothingness, which are actually two different ways of experiencing nothingness.
When possessions and sensations - stimuli - are eagerly pursued, they will
sometimes be used up or unavailable. The result is negative nothingness, a
state of anxious deprivation. But when stimuli are considered distractions and
are foresworn, positive nothingness results: a state of pure, concentrated
attention or mindfulness. This is the frame of mind in which the Japanese craft
masters - sword makers, potters, calligraphers - and athletes - archers,
martial artists -have worked. It is also the precondition of enlightenment in
Zen Buddhism.

Zen is quintessentially Japanese,
Berman writes - for better and worse. The power to concentrate attention is,
after all, morally neutral. One can be a mindful pacifist or a mindful
militarist. During the 1930s, as Japanese nationalism reached fever pitch, the
prestige and techniques of Zen Buddhism were frequently co-opted by the state.
Unlike most other religions, Zen lacks an "axial" principle, an objective or
transcendental criterion of morality, like the will of God or the dignity of
the individual. This has spared Japan the dogmatism of more religious societies
and the litigiousness of more liberal ones; but it has left many Japanese with
no moral center, no means to withstand group pressure or the tides of history.

This is, Berman points out, at once a
strength and a weakness. In emergencies, Japanese typically behave with
extraordinary self-restraint and orderliness. (And not just in emergencies: the
stampedes that occasionally kill shoppers at big department-store sales in
America are inconceivable there.) But initiative ("thinking outside the box" in
management-speak) is just as spectacularly lacking; and the conscientious
objector, the stubborn moral individualist, is a rare character type in Japan. The
nuclear disaster at Fukushima offers a poignant illustration: workers and
residents stayed calm and shared food and shelter freely among themselves; but
executives at the Tokyo Electric Power Company covered up to protect their
superiors and punished whistleblowers.

Should one admire this distinctive
capacity for self-sacrifice and national unity or deplore it as abject
conformism? Both, obviously; but a more interesting question is: can a world that
has overdosed on assertive individualism and manic consumerism of the American
variety learn something useful from Japanese culture? Berman thinks so. Economic
austerity is nearly universal today, and may be for quite a while - for that
matter, the environment may not survive another epoch of capitalist prosperity.
As one Japanologist points out, the country seems to have a "gift for
minimalist living."

American
systems and assumptions based on constant growth, wealth and prosperity, many
of which are pathologically corrupt, are dying fast. The demands of the new
world we live in feel a lot more Japanese - equitable, careful, quiet, and
modest.

The Japanese, Berman observes, seem
to have attained something like "luxury in austerity," the elements of which
include "aesthetic awareness (the presence of beauty and sensuality in daily
life); care, precision, and mindfulness; continuity with the past." Traditional
craft values are incorporated into contemporary industrial design and
processes. Berman calls it "archaic modernism."

For a very long time - perhaps
forever - American individualism and the distinctively American dream of
limitless abundance must be renounced, or they may prove lethal. Of course the
world still needs, and will always need, American ingenuity, tolerance,
self-reliance, and our culture's many other virtues. But a humbler America must
now, for the first time, learn another culture's virtues if the world is to
avoid another Dark Ages.

[END]

George Scialabba is a contributing editor of The Baffler and the author of What Are Intellectuals Good For? and
other books.